functioning without birth control, restarting #selflove100, + intuitive classes

there are so many things going on behind the scenes for me lately, so in today's episode: three topics that have been heavy on my mind-

how do women function without birth control, when that's all we've known?
more here from episode 7

restarting the #selflove100 challenge, are you joining me?
more here from episode 3

i've been taking intuitive classes, do you trust your intuition?
more here from episode 28

connect with julia on instagram @beautybyjulia + tik tok @juliasalvia

unlock more archive content on instagram @theselflovearchive + tik tok @theselflovearchives

sign up for the self-love archives newsletter: www.theselflovearchives.com

Transcript

Julia Salvia: 0:00

Welcome back to the Self Love Archives podcast. I have a special episode today. I'm showing up with no makeup and we're gonna do our makeup together. So if you are listening to the podcast everywhere you can listen, make sure to check out this video on YouTube if you want to come hang out with me. But that's also a little background on what you're probably going to hear in the background like my coffee. Maybe this is like an ASMR podcast. Who knows? But I'm going to be doing my makeup with you guys today for this episode, so I hope you enjoy, wherever you're listening. Let's get into it. Set up all of my makeup here. I did indeed order from the Sephora sale very last minute, like, last night. Like, no joke, last night, when there was probably like an hour, if that, left in the sale. I didn't get too much because I really, I don't need anything at all. Though, I wanted to try one of those sprays that helps with bacteria on your face because I've been getting this guy on my face. I have just a little bit of acne that is, I'm really just struggling to get to go away. And I don't know if that has to do with the fact that I've been, I don't want to say stressed because I really haven't been stressed, but I have been kind of overthinking things, kind of in my head, kind of burnt out. So I guess whether we want to call it stress from being overwhelmed or stress from life. I'm thinking my cortisol levels are just a little high. So I'm having trouble getting this guy to go away. So anybody else on their acne journey as well? I feel like I've been on this journey since I have been little. Speaking of acne and hormones and all that, I came to this realization. That we as women don't know how to take care of our bodies without birth control. Because we've never been taught to take care of our bodies without it. And it's so crazy to me that every time we want to go off of our birth control, or we want to change something, or switch something up, we all feel You know, hey, I trust my doctor, let me give them a call and let them know that I want to come off my birth control. And when we call them and tell them that, they're like, okay, and? What do you mean, and? What do you mean, and? Coming off your birth control is, is a big thing, especially if you've been on it for as long as I've seen a lot of people on it. I'm curious to see Am I curious to see, are you curious to see how this will have an effect on us as human beings, as women, in the future? Because I'm, that concerns me. My thought process in personally coming off of birth control was that I hope to want to have kids one day. I'm kind of on the fence. I very much do lean. on the side of the fence of having children, either way, I'm, I think about how there are so many things that women are not allowed to have, or to put on their face, or in their bodies, or eat, or do when they're pregnant. So, um, My immediate thought is like, okay, if I can't do these while I'm building a human, why am I doing them when I'm not building a human? Where in this process, where, where in the building of a human being, that process connects with taking care of my body as a human being. Women can't be on birth control when they decide to have a child. I know that birth control can be really helpful for a lot of different people But at what cost is how I look at it. As someone who, quite frankly, I don't even know if I could confidently say that I'm a 100 percent healthy person, but at what cost am I going to partake in or take or eat or put on my body certain things that I'm not allowed to do when I'm pregnant? Is there more of a benefit or lack thereof when it comes to drinking alcohol, eating certain kinds of fish, using retinols and other stronger skincare products? Is there more of a benefit to doing those things when I'm not pregnant to my body as is? Because we know that there are like At the top of the list of do not dos when we are pregnant. So I started the journey of figuring out and learning my body off of birth control because if I can't be on birth control when I'm pregnant or wanting to conceive, then I'm not going to know who or what that person is or that body is when I get there. So why not try to figure out and learn more about that body off of all medications, especially hormonal medications now than wait until I'm ready to have a child. I don't know. Does that make sense to you? So coming off of birth control was not, It wasn't, it was an easy decision for me in the moment because of just how crazy I felt on the birth control that my gynecologist at the time had put me on. But overall, after being on it for, god, ten years? I think the decision was definitely difficult. I felt very alone in making that decision when I felt like I should have had the support behind me, especially from my doctor, the person who's supposed to, you know, know the medical side of my body. I remember I had called her and, well, called the front and asked, Hey, I've been wanting to come off my birth control. Is there, you know, can I schedule an appointment to talk to my gynecologist about this? And the woman at the front desk was like, why would you do that? Well, I've been on it for 10 years or so. It's been like a really long time. She was like, yeah, just, just come off of it. But are you going to use other protection? I was like, I'm not. taking birth control for protection from getting pregnant. I'm taking birth control because of my skin. And she was like, yeah, you could just come off of it. I was like, but I, can I like talk to the gyno about this? Can I, can I figure out more of like a plan? And she's like, no, just come off of it. And I'm like, Okay, I ended up scheduling an appointment with my gyno And I did talk to her I got the same spiel of Are you using protection? This, that, and I was like, oh, Yes, but like, this has nothing to do with me coming off my birth control. It has nothing to do with, like, getting pregnant or whatnot. It was almost like this crazy idea to them that I would come off of my birth control to learn more about my body. Or come off of my birth control and not want to get pregnant. It was just, it was a horrible experience. And I hope that For your sake, you have not had that experience, but I feel like unfortunately a lot of, a lot of us have, and I think it's so crazy to think about how little we know about our bodies as women. If I think back to what I learned in fourth grade or fifth grade in sex ed, it was truly all about STDs, all about, you know, the process of having a baby. never actually learning about my body right now as a woman and how to take care of it. It's just make sure that you're using a condom, stay safe. And as a 30 year old woman now, I feel like we've been robbed of the proper education on how to take care of the body that I have. Because all that sex ed classes taught me was that it's shameful to partake in any sexual activity, especially as a woman. I think about how coming off of birth control has effect, how, how it has effected my identity and how Now that I'm not on it, I now identify myself as a person who is not able to lose weight or be healthy or stay healthy and be fit. Especially because of how difficult it has been since I've come off of birth control. I think it's been If we're in 2024, this coming October of 2024 would be, I believe, three years off of birth control. That's crazy actually to think. And the process of figuring out my body has been, it's been difficult. On top of that, I've had a lot of life changes for sure that have I don't want to say negatively affected my body, but I, I'm gonna go there. They've negatively affected my body. My routines have changed a lot. But I also think that even if my routines didn't change, I'm not sure that my body would respond to them the same way that my body did respond to them when I was on birth control. Routines that I'm talking about are like getting six hours of sleep and having all the energy in the world, being able to be on a certain diet and really seeing results pretty quickly, working out daily, sometimes even twice a day. And now I literally can barely get seven and a half hours of sleep and feel energized for the day. I feel like my body wants me to get no less than nine. And that's, that's such a big difference when you try to put it into perspective of wanting to make progress in life or wanting to get stuff done. If you're that person that thinks that Where does the time go? Or, like, there's only so, you know, there's only so much time in a day. Every single hour is so important. So to go from being able to sleep just six hours and have all the energy in the world to then have to sleep nine? In addition, I can barely work out the same way I used to. It's almost like, or it is like my body needs so much more rest now and rehabilitation than it did when I was on birth control. But. I truly think that if I never had gone on birth control, I would know these things about my body. We would know these things about our bodies and be able to make it work to the point where we do have more energy. We are fueling our bodies the right way we are working out in and staying active in ways that are helpful for our body. I just feel like so many things would be so different. Truly. I think what's priceless though about coming off of birth control and learning more about my body is that when I do decide to continue my life, I'm not going to be per se surprised by how my body reacts to it. If I decide to have a child, I'm going to know what my body is like at, I'm going to know my body, so I'm going to know what is changing, what is different, and what I may need to do to make myself feel more comfortable. And if something's wrong with my body, now that I'm off of birth control, I know my cycle, I'm going to be able to pinpoint, Oh, my period came late because I was stressed. Or if there's something medically wrong, I am going to be able to say, Okay, that's not my normal equilibrium or maybe my hormones are out of balance or maybe if I do this I'm gonna need to get a little more extra sleep or if I do this I can maybe get a little less sleep. I was absolutely not able to pinpoint anything about myself or my body when I was on birth control. I think the only thing I could tell you Truly is when my period was going to come and that was only because I looked at a pack of pills every single morning and it always came like on that on that specific day. But there's something so powerful in knowing everything about how your body works and being able to fuel your body in the way that it needs. To refuel your body in the way that it needs and to take care of your body in the way that it needs. I Dived a little bit deeper into this conversation in a previous podcast episode Where I talked more about my experience with birth control and coming off of birth control but also my experience with my gyno and my experience with Just balancing my hormones and cycle syncing and all of that good stuff If you want to check out that episode. I will put it in the description cause I don't remember what number that episode was, but I feel like it was at least like 10 or so episodes ago. So make sure to check that out. If you are watching the YouTube version, hey, you probably have noticed that I have been standing this entire time. I have my walking pad underneath me. That thing has been lovely. A lot of low impact workouts have been so much better for me too, ever since coming off of my birth control. I also feel like walking outside really has changed my life a little bit. You're getting vitamin D, you're taken in the sun. I went for a walk this morning, and it absolutely killed me. This is the first beautiful day in the springtime, and we've had tons of beautiful days, but this has been the first, like, hot, beautiful day. It is 80 degrees outside. It's been nothing. Below, it's been nothing higher than like 65, maybe a 70 degree day. But I had walked to the gym today. That was rough, that was rough, that was rough. A couple of things are changing here at the self love archives. I'm going to be, and I have been actually since January. It was one of my January goals. I am going to be rebranding the self love archives, not by much. So you might not even notice the rebrand. It might just look like an addition, because the colors are going to be the same, all of that good stuff is going to be the same. And I'm really excited for everything that is to come, but we are just about done with the rebranding. And then we are going to move on to. actually redoing the entire website. And then there's going to be even more exciting things to come of that. You probably remember my self love 100 challenge. If you follow me on Tik TOK and on Instagram, the best challenge ever that has truly helped me love myself more, especially after coming off of my birth control. It's been a really long, it was a really long process. As I said before, to figure out how to love my body better without the help of other things. And It's not that the help of other things is bad. I think to me birth control came off as like a crutch. Birth control came off to me as like a band aid or just this normal regular shmegular thing that we just do. That we just start taking to be able to live our lives more easily rather than Rather than someone, like our taxes, paying for the education to teach us how to actually take care of our bodies. So, in a couple of weeks, I'm gonna be starting the Self Love 100 Challenge again. I've tried it a couple of times, and it's, it's my challenge that I created. And I've tried it a couple of times actively with you guys. And every single time I've done it, I have failed. And haven't failed in a sense of doing the challenge. I've failed in sharing the challenge with you. And I'm trying to figure out why I'm struggling with sharing the challenge. Like why I'm struggling with filming the content for the challenge. And I think it has to do with I'm being too hard on myself about sharing it with you. And I'm thinking that it's boring, but then I want you to, I want you guys to really grasps what the challenge is and all the things that are included with the challenge, including walking outside, which is why full circle here. so you're going to start to see that challenge pop up once again. I have some things in the works for the self love 100 challenge. I'm going to put a link in the description slash show notes down below so that you can download the self love 100 challenge and start doing it with me. It is It is my heart and soul in a daily routine. I think that our daily routines are so important. The progress and the process, the process is part of our progress. It's what provides us with progress into loving ourselves more, taking care of ourselves better, and being overall a better us. So I created the Self Love 100 Challenge with that in mind. And I really want to show you in my content how I incorporate the self love 100 into my day to day, which is why I am going to be coming back and showing you more content with the self love 100 challenge. I just finished part one of three. Well, part 3. 1 of the entire course of my intuitive course last Monday. And it got me thinking, I haven't really shared my experience in doing this intuitive course. Basically, I'm here calling it an intuitive course, which it is, which it is. I'm basically taking psychic classes. I'm learning how to be more intuitively connected and honestly be able to read for people. My goal in taking this class was to not necessarily read for other people, but that is part of the process. But my goal was to be in a position where I trusted myself more. In the past, I've struggled with listening to my intuition. I talked ever so slightly about this in last, not last week, but the week before, the last episode about how I have now been able to decipher where I feel this fear. In doing something Versus like a gut feeling of like, no, this isn't good for me. Like that intuitive feeling of No, this person isn't good. No, you shouldn't do that and It took me a really long time to come to a place where I could trust those feelings or even Acknowledge and recognize what those feelings meant to me So when I got the opportunity to take this intuitive class, this intuitive course, I said yes immediately because I was like, this is so cool. it's given me a new appreciation for meditating and it's given me just a new appreciation of Myself because I'm able to actually Trust myself a lot more now. I Wanted to bring this up because I want to know if you guys want to hear more about this class and this course And what we learned in this class and course, I think one of the craziest moments for me in this course was one of actually the first times we read for other people. So we're all in this group and I don't know what anyone looks like. I, the only thing that we know about each other is our first name and what everybody sounds like, of course, because we're on a zoom. So we'll read in these groups. And each class, I think this was level one, each class we would read in a group and it was kind of this warm up into helping us trust our own intuitive abilities by all of us reading for just one person to see how all of our clairvoyance is. Is it, is it a voyance? Is it clairvoyance? I'm really horrible with terms, but Whatever the terminology is We all read in a group and used all the different ways that we Connect with with our intuitive ability and with our guides and we answered the same question. So this woman had asked about this poetry book that she had written and she wanted to know like what it was for and why she had written it and really that was the only information she had given all of us. So the first thing that I had felt when she started to talk is that my stomach kind of grew bigger, not literally, but I felt like a pressure of my stomach, like as if you were feeling like really full I felt like that pressure in My stomach and then I almost immediately Kind of started to cry And that's been a wild thing in all of these classes for me. I connect to my guides and connect with people through You Just empathy and I feel a lot of different emotions. Like I just, I feel things. That should be to no surprise, but I definitely feel things and I just felt immense sadness. And now that I know what that feeling was and kind of comparing it to her question and the actual answer of, uh, what everybody read and then her providing more info at the end, I've come to realize that that immense like sadness that I felt was basically grief. So as all of us shared our thoughts or our intuitive read on this question, I realized that all of us had extremely similar answers minus, plus and minus like a few different things. The three things that I saw that were noticeably important, or felt, were the feeling of, like, that immense grief, my stomach feeling super big, super full, and then kind of seeing this very, very long, never ending path. Almost like if you've ever driven in, like, Utah. This giant, what looks like a never ending road that leads to To who knows what. And it was actually crazy because everyone else that was on the call, I think besides one other person. And there's like maybe six of us, every single person, except for maybe one, saw this wide open, like beautiful landscape of the sun is shining, the clouds are out, it's all green. And then this just very, very long path. Which is wild. Like, there's no, I don't know, there's just no, no denying it when all of your answers are so incredibly similar. So, she continues to tell us a little bit more about herself. How she actually wrote the book for her daughter who passed away at birth. Like, as I think she was a stillborn, and I, in that moment, just sitting here thinking about it, I was like, what? That would make so much sense for the feeling that I got in my stomach and for the sadness that I felt, like this immense grief. I just, it was inexplainable, it was wild, it was crazy, and from that lesson from that class, and I think it was like the third class in, I have really trusted this whole entire process of learning how to connect more spiritually and with my guides. And it really has led to trusting my intuition in big ways but definitely in a lot of small ways as well. Like if I grab a pair of underwear out of my drawer, I'll feel If you know, if you know, if you know, you know. I hate half of the underwear in my drawer and I really need to, I have like some really good ones that are fine, that are comfortable to wear. And then I have a ton in my drawer that they either have good days or bad days. This underwear literally has a good day or a bad day. And on a good day, the underwear doesn't roll. on me. On a bad day, it does. So as I'm picking out my underwear, I will get an intuition on whether or not this underwear is going to roll on me. And whenever I listen to that intuition, My underwear doesn't roll for the day. And whenever I don't listen to my intuition, my underwear rolls. I think a part of our intuition too is when we trust ourselves, we tend to love ourselves more. It's kind of like this little circle. If we can trust ourselves, we love ourselves more. But if we do all the things we need to do to love ourselves more, we trust ourselves more. I think trusting myself more and choosing myself more, I would have avoided a lot of different situations. I would have had more time. I would have saved myself a lot of time. And I don't think that I would have gotten hurt in a lot of different relationships, situations, experiences. I think all of it was a learning lesson. There's like this continuation of a pattern that the universe gives us until we start listening. And that's also, I really want you guys, if you're loving this, the end of this podcast episode, I want you to go ahead and listen to my last episode, because we talked so much about listening to our intuition and getting quiet and actually hearing what our bodies have to say to us. Some of the choices that I have made in the past, I wouldn't have made. I wouldn't dare make today. But that's because I have grown, I am stronger, I love myself more, I trust myself more, and most importantly, I listen to my intuition. Whether it's in big or in small ways. I want to hear about what ideas you guys have for next upcoming podcast episodes and who you would want to have as a guest or who you who you would want me to have as a guest on the podcast. I've been very in my head lately, very focused on a lot of things going on behind the scenes. So forgive me for this very lackadaisical podcast episode of just doing my makeup. If you enjoyed that parshi parshion? If you enjoyed this parshion, oh my goodness, porshion. If you enjoyed this portion of the podcast episode of me doing my makeup with you, please let me know in the comments below. If you're watching on YouTube. Or feel free to reach out via DM. My DMs are always open. And let me, let me know. I will see you guys in about two weeks. Same time, same place, 12 o'clock Sunday. Sunday, 12 o'clock Eastern Time. I love you.